AMUSING, INTERESTING, OUTRAGEOUS, or PROFOUND

I will say that their sentiment was borne in bad faith from the get-go so that didn't harness any charity from Lemmy, but I do see what they're saying. Politicians can be multi-faceted, as can the bills they draft, the laws they write, and the people who elect them.

Kamala Harris is a good example of this for me. She supports doing something about the greedflation in the economy, restoring health care for women (i.e. reproductive health care), and fighting against supposed fascism in favor of freedom.

Where I don't agree with her is her stance on Gaza and the Palestinian Genocide, notably that she is not willing to place an arms embargo on a state that is literally committing war crimes and breaking the Geneva Convention on a continual basis. Also her tendency to gravitate to the middle as she's tended to do across her entire career, and the overall message of her campaign as "freedom" when the US' actions directly lead to the destruction of freedom for Palestinians at the same time (the message is essentially conservative: freedom for me (an American), but not for thee (non-American)).

People participate in the political life for all sorts of reasons. From my point of view, Republicans do so out of selfish reasons more than altruistic ones, and ones that stymy diversity in favor of uniformity. Democrats do so to provide safety nets for those who can't do so themselves, and generally have a greater capacity not only for compassion and empathy but for acknowledging and believing in science as a tool for directing policy. There are still special interests in both parties that actually occupy said offices, but I want to say that the general population follows those sorts of trends (from my PoV).

Given that, people of course read politicians and issues and bills and laws from a certain perspective that places priority of some things over others. I think it is unfair to call people out on things that they didn't necessarily intend on coming true, but sometimes things happen nonetheless. It's the difference between virtue ethics and consequentialism, essentially. To wrap it up, most people don't vote once and didn't just start voting, so my rule of thumb is to still hold people accountable for, like this thread says, voting in restrictions to school lunches or books or whatever. You can't really claim self-immunity because reality doesn't exist in a vacuum.